UK Quilters
Continuing my series demonstrating the sewing machine feet your might own, I am sure you will be familiar with the walking foot, but have you ever used a roller foot? Generic Walking foot with quilting guide. My favourite looking foot! Roller foot for difficult surfaces like rubber and leather. Piping foot for overlocks. Seems I’ve…
In part two of my four part series I have shown you the more unusual feet and these might be less familiar to a quilter, but more useful to a dressmaker .. like the specialist concealed zipper foot Adjustable screw on zip and piping foot. Adjustable concealed zipper foot. Overlocking foot. More on Part 3
Have you ever wondered what all those feet that come along with your new sewing machine are used for. My ‘day job’ when I am not browsing around this website, is a sewing machine engineer, and there are not many female engineers around either. I have put together a four part guide to…
I don’t know about you, but I hate throwing anything away in my sewing room. Snippets of thread, yarn, and fabric must have a useful purpose, but what do you do with them? Do you have uses for them, or do you find it easy to let go? For several years now, I have a…
So you’ve decided to get a new/used machine that you want to last the test of time, hopefully I can provide you with some tips on what to look out for and avoid any bad buys! Firstly, avoid the plastic chassis and plastic framed machines usually “pile em high, sell em cheap” ones often found…
There is a ‘formula’ for virtually every shape we need to cut for patchwork. Hopefully the following will help you to work out how to rotary cut Flying Geese. Finished size – this is the size of the unit/piece once it is stitched into the block/quilt. Rounding up to the nearest ⅛ inch. If you…
Most quilts are ‘straight set’ – that is the blocks are set square to the edges of the quilt; sometimes there are sashing strips between the blocks, sometimes not. Sashing strips can make a quilt larger and they can also act as coping strips when pieced individually around each block as they enable you to…
In this second installment of The Ultimate Wadding Guide I will be discussing the different materials used in the amazing array of waddings that are available to us. In order to help you decide which material is perfect for your project, I will be looking at the pro’s and con’s of each material, splitting them…
Wadding – it’s the bit you don’t see, but your choice of wadding for your patchwork project can have a big impact on how it finally looks when quilted and then as it is washed over time. When you have spent hours selecting the fabrics and weeks (or months.. maybe years..) constructing the quilt, it…
APPLIQUÉ The technique of applying one or more fabrics to a background with hand or machine stitching. Always use a thread to match the colour of the shape to be appliquéd. Hand appliqué Also known as needle turn appliqué. The appliqué pattern can be traced onto the background fabric or an overlay method can be…
In this final part of our short series on Sewing Needles Jon and Callum talk about which are the best Schmetz needles to use for different fabrics or specialist sewing. If we are to improve our technique and get the best results from our efforts then using the correct needle for the job is equally…
This is the third post in my series about EPP. This is looking at the type of stitch you might want to use to join your pieces. Traditionally EPP uses a whip stitch, but there are now many alternatives and it’s really about personal choice and what works best for you. What you want is…
Mandi
Jane Galley
Chris Franses
Anna Sewell
Helen Kent
Sylvia Priest - webmaster and quilter
Sue Griffiths